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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293378">old friends not forgotten</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont'>jasondont (minigami)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Not A Fix-It, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Xenophobia, no betas we die like etc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:22:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,417</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293378</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahsoka Tano finds an old friend two years after the fall of the Republic.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>CT-7567 | Rex &amp; Ahsoka Tano</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>old friends not forgotten</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is very dumb but i hope you guys like it.</p><p>merry christmas to those who celebrate it, and happy holidays to everyone else!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ahsoka steps off the freighter. A wave of cold and dirty rain hits her in the face, and she grimaces and adjusts her hood. Her montrals itch, and so does the skin of her face, but she breathes in deeply, savouring the air. By now she is used to it, to the exhaustion that accompanies space travel, but the first breath of fresh oxygen after spending so long in space is something else.</p><p>“Ashla.” Ahsoka gives in to the temptation to roll her eyes and then makes herself smile. She turns around.</p><p>“Yes, Piet?” she asks as blandly as she can. The human frowns. He is almost a head shorter than her, and that’s not counting her montrals. He hates it so much it almost makes up for the fact that he is a speciest prick.</p><p>“Three hours,” he says. It’s not the first time, or the second, or even the third. Ahsoka breathes in, breathes out; her smile doesn’t waver.</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>The human crosses his arms. His tone of voice changes, becomes condescending, and he looks her up and down.</p><p>“Don’t forget I know how you people work,” he says. He makes as if he was going to put a hand on her arm, and Ahsoka steps away smiles at him with a mouth full of very sharp teeth. The man’s hand wavers, stops in the air, and he lets it drop.</p><p>“Sure. I’ll see you in three hours,” she says, and then turns around once again. The man says something under his breath, but she ignores him and lets the rain and the wind and the mist hide her.</p><p>For the past year she has been travelling around the galaxy, always moving. Partly because it’s the only way to avoid the Empire’s new Jedi hunters, but also because that way she can help the still-nascent Rebellion find the allies, the connections, it needs to ever be successful.</p><p>She has been a pilot and a mechanic and worked security and moved cargo boxes. She’s met so many people sometimes she wonders at the fact that she can even remember their names. She’s drunk with customs agents and avoided the new stormtroopers—still clones, but wrong, blank and sad and quiet—and made more friends than enemies.</p><p>It’s slow going, but it <em>is </em>going—it’ll take her the better part of a decade to finish the first phase of this project she has started, and sometimes she can feel impatience gnaw at her stomach, urging her on, to do more, to do it faster.</p><p>She has had to learn how to wait, in the past few years, however. She doesn’t think she will ever be as good at waiting like some of her teachers, but she knows they’d be proud of her, of what she’s achieved, despite everything else.</p><p>The spaceport isn’t far from the settlement itself, a small, dirty place surrounded by scrapped ships and garbage and puddles of tibanna. It stinks of smoke and greasy food and speeder fuel. Ahsoka nods to the pair of stormtroopers mounting guard by the main gate, and the men nod at her, their eerie white helmets dripping wet. They are exhausted—Ahsoka can feel their weariness in the Force. They barely look at her, and she fights against the temptation to fiddle with her hood, to hide her face better. Nobody knows she is alive—as far as everyone knows, Ahsoka Tano fell at the hands of her men two years ago.</p><p>Once she is inside, she doesn’t know where to go. Something calls to her: a weird sense of—familiarity. It makes her lekku itch, and it may be the polluted air or Piet’s ship’s shitty scrubbers, but no. It’s something else—or someone else.</p><p>Ahsoka frowns. She keeps walking, trying to ignore the way the wind cuts through the ragged fabric of her cloak, and makes sure her blaster is in its place, at her right hip.</p><p>It’s a mining town, one of many. The planet is mostly a big ocean with some island nations peeking over the waves, and it’s rich in minerals, in fuel, in all the things most advanced worlds need to keep themselves that way. As far as Ahsoka knows, there has been deep mining here since at least the Old Republic—and, despite the couple of stormtroopers guarding the town gates, something tells her things haven’t changed that much in the past years.</p><p>It’s hard to swallow, sometimes, but for most people, the only difference between the Republic and the new regime is that the names are different, and so are the uniforms, and the war is over.</p><p>The streets are dirty and noisy and full of people, and Ashoka disappears easily despite her height. The crowd is made up mostly of miners and spacers, and there are droids everywhere, from astromechs to battered protocol droids and cargo handlers. She feels herself smile, relax—life is hard for these people, and there is a feeling of underlying tension, but they are so… so alive. People talk in the corners or under the awnings of shops and around the entrance to cantinas, drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, shuddering in the misty rain, and they all feel tired but it’s also so—normal.</p><p>The place feels welcoming, and she’s been breathing badly recycled oxygen for long enough that the air feels almost sweet despite the pollution, but she makes herself hurry, makes herself walk faster. It’s not as if Piet can leave without her—he might be the captain and own the ship, but he’s self-aware enough to know that while he may know how to pilot, a huge hauler like his is a bit above his abilities—but something tells her whatever the Force wants her to see, to find, won’t wait for her much longer.</p><p>It guides her to a cantina. Most spaceport towns serve food she can eat, but it’s often in the border between bad and abysmal, and when the spicy aroma of actual Ryloth cooking hits her nose she makes a beeline for the place.</p><p>It’s a small place, more of an actual restaurant than a bar—it’s very busy, and the crowd is mostly non-humans. She manages to snag herself a place in the high bar that lines the far wall, elbowing her way between a huge Whiphid who snorts and decides to leave it alone when she shows them her fangs, and a tipsy Zabrak who barely looks at her.</p><p>There is a holoscreen mounted high up on the wall behind the main bar. There is a limmie game on, and half the crowd is focused on whatever’s going on. Ahsoka snorts, shakes her head, and sits down in her place— and then she turns back, lowering her hood.</p><p>There is a blond head sitting right under the screen. Human, or close enough, one of the few in the cantina. They—he?—are alone, and they’re wearing a ratty leatheris jacket, a wet poncho hanging from the hook under the bar. There is a half-empty glass of dark ale by his left elbow, and she can see an empty bowl of something in front of him.</p><p>She blinks. It can’t be—but she’d recognise that head, the set of those shoulders, everywhere. And the Force swirls around him, around her and around the bar, thick and heavy, so loud it makes her montrals hurt.</p><p>“Hey, lady, are you gonna sit down or is that place free,” someone says at her right.</p><p>Ahsoka jumps. She turns to look at the Twi’lek, and the woman recoils.</p><p>“Okay, sorry, kriff.”</p><p>She leaves, and Ahsoka ignores her, ignores the slight feeling of guilt she can’t help but feel—she doesn’t actually like scaring people who don’t deserve it.</p><p>Ahsoka reaches out with her mind—and yes. It’s him. And she might have sensed him earlier, but the bar is too full and he’s gotten better at shielding, and. Well.</p><p>She thought she’d never see REx again, after all.</p><p>He must sense her because she sees his shoulders tense, and—this makes her smile, it’s just like him—he uses the glass bottles on the other side of the bar to see what’s at his back. It doesn’t take him long to find her—she’s taller than she used to be, and there are not many Togruta around. He stops like he’s been frozen, and then he slowly turns around to look directly at her.</p><p>Ahsoka can feel herself smiling, small and wobbly and kind of awkward.</p><p>“Ahsoka?” she hears him say, his voice hoarse. He looks tired, older than he should—it’s been just two years, but. Well.</p><p>She slowly approaches him. She keeps her mind to herself, half because she wants to respect his privacy, half because she doesn’t know if she’ll like what she finds. She might be happy to see him—he might not be.</p><p>“Hey, Rexster,” she says. He just blinks. He looks exhausted, and sad, and thinner than he was the last time she saw him.</p><p>“Fierfek,” he replies, and then blinks, again, lowers his gaze. He rubs his face with his right hand. “Is it really you?”</p><p>“In the flesh,” Ahsoka says. She gingerly leans an elbow on the bar, unsure if her presence is welcome, and he moves a bit, making her some room.</p><p>“Last time I saw you, I was still taller than you,” he says, and Ahsoka laughs, sudden and too loud. He half-smiles, but the gesture doesn’t really reach his eyes. Ahsoka feels herself stiffen as well, and blinks, lowers her gaze, to his hands, lying next to her arm on the bar. They are red and raw, stained with the black dust of the underwater mines.</p><p>“It’s been two years,” she answers.</p><p>He nods. He looks down to his hands as well.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” he asks.</p><p>Ahsoka sighs. She nods her head in the direction of the door. “Do you have a minute?”</p><p>*</p><p>“So a freighter pilot,” Rex says. He’s sitting on a crate, poncho on and boots leaning on the edge. He looks like he belongs there, in the back alley on a backwater mining world in the middle of nowhere.</p><p>“I’m a freighter pilot now. Couple months ago I worked as a mechanic on another ship,” Ahsoka says. She drops her gaze for an instant. She’s also worked for smugglers, for the kind of scum that makes Hondo Ohnaka look kind and good—but he doesn’t need to know that. She has her hood up again, although it’s stopped raining. Her stripes are too conspicuous. “But right now I’m just a pilot, yes. You?”</p><p>Rex shrugs. He isn’t really looking at her in the face. He tries not to—she’s noticed that. He is still shielding and shielding well, but Ahsoka would say it’s shame, what makes him avoid her eyes. Shame and guilt.</p><p>“A bit of everything. Right now, I’m working in one of the deep-sea mines,” he explains. He smiles, small and bitter and crooked. “Not many job opportunities for clones, it would seem.”</p><p>“As many as for former Jedi padawans, I’d say,” she can’t help but reply. The smile drops from his face, and he hunches his shoulders even more.</p><p>Ahsoka sighs. She lowers her eyes as well. She feels uncomfortable, and can’t help but to be surprised by this fact, even if she really shouldn’t. Two years is not that long and a lifetime, at the same time. She glances back at him, at Rex. She doesn’t think she likes what she sees.</p><p>He looks—mostly healthy. Too thin, and tired, but who isn’t these days. He is alive and he is well. But he feels—he feels wrong. It’s not grief, or it’s not just grief—there is something else. And Ahsoka knows she shouldn’t be surprised by that either, but she can’t help it. She has seen Rex tired and angry and scared and devastated, but not like this. He feels hopeless.</p><p>She wonders if he’s seen the stormtroopers at the town gates, how he’s been dealing with the new Imperial garrison she saw from the ship when they landed.</p><p>He won’t look her in the eye, and she feels like she has forgotten how to change that—she isn’t sure she has the right, anymore, to try and change that.</p><p>She left him, after all.</p><p>“Rex—I—,” she begins. He sighs.</p><p>“What are you doing here, Ahsoka,” he asks. For the first time, he looks at her, his dark eyes full of something she doesn’t quite know how to name.</p><p>“It’s—I didn’t know you were here. It’s just—we had to stop to refuel,” she answers. He scoffs, rubs at his eyes. “Rex. I’m not lying. I didn’t know you were here.”</p><p>He looks at her, face blank, and suddenly Ahsoka is hit with the realization that the thing that lurks in his eyes might very well be disappointment.</p><p>“I’m glad you are here,” she says. “I’m glad you’re well. I—,” Ahsoka shuts her mouth. Suddenly, for the first time in a very long time, she feels very young. She hugs herself under her cloak, and she hears him sigh and stand up, his beat-up boots scuffing the cracked pavement.</p><p>He stops right in front of her, and Ahsoka feels him put his hands over her cloak, around her arms. She is taller than him, but suddenly he feels as big as she remembers she found him when they met on Christophsis, five years and a lifetime ago.</p><p>“Come here, kid,” he says, and she lets herself be moved when he puts his arms around her, embraces him back. She hides her face in his shoulder, and he still smells the same, somehow, gun oil and clean sweat and home.</p><p>She’d feel bad about hugging him so hard if he wasn’t doing the same.</p><p>“I’ve missed you so much,” she says, muffled against his jacket. He is shivering, and when she hears him sniff, she smiles, watery, through her own tears. “We shouldn’t have separated.”</p><p>Rex sighs again and moves away a bit so that he can look at her. He puts one warm, rough hand in her face, and for the first time, he looks her in the eye.</p><p>“We did what we thought was right,” he says, his voice low and rough and oh so sure. He is not crying, but his eyes look too bright. For a beat, he just looks at her, his dark eyes roaming all over her face like he wants to commit what he sees to memory. “And it was probably the right decision, even if—even if it’s been hard.”</p><p>“I know,” Ahsoka replies. She sniffs, and he smiles at her, small but more genuine. “How are you, Rex? You feel—I can’t—I won’t read you, but you look tired.”</p><p>He sighs. “I am tired. But I’m fine.”</p><p>Ahsoka can feel his ribs under his jacket. She frowns, and grabs his face, makes him look at her again. He rolls his eyes and lets himself be moved.</p><p>“You’re not fine,” she says, matter of fact. “I’m not fine, either. I don’t think any of us will ever be fine again.”</p><p>Rex clenches his jaw. He lets go of her, and crosses his arms, turns away and looks at the end of the alley. The main street of the town is just beyond, and it’s still full of people, all of them moving on with their lives.</p><p>Ahsoka looks at her chrono—she has a little over two hours until she has to return the spaceport. She looks at Rex and then takes a seat on the crate.</p><p>“Rex,” she begins, and then she closes her mouth. She doesn’t know where to start. She has so many things to tell him, so many things she wants to talk to him about. But she doesn’t know if he even wants to hear them, and anyway—she can’t stay. She needs to leave, she has to keep on doing the work.</p><p>She can never stay. If she believed in fate, in destiny, she’d say that’s her curse—to be the one who always leaves. The one who can never stay.</p><p> </p><p>Rex sighs again. His shoulders lose some of the tension, and he glances back at her over his shoulder.</p><p>“Kid,” he starts, and then half-smiles, wry. “It feels weird calling you that. You’ve really grown up quite a lot, Ahsoka.”</p><p>Ahsoka snorts. She knuckles at her eyes, takes care of a stray tear, and then leans her chin on her bent knee, her boot up on the crate.</p><p>“You’re just short, Rexster,” she replies, and she knows her tone falls short of how it’s supposed to sound, but he smirks, arms crossed, suddenly exactly as she remembers him like time hasn’t passed.</p><p>“Kamino’s finest, Tano,” he drawls, and Ahsoka barks out a shocked laugh, too loud in the alley.</p><p>He grins at her, wide and young and blinding, and, for just a second, Ahsoka allows herself to believe that maybe they <em>will </em>be just fine.</p><p>*</p><p>“I’ve been working for some people,” she says carefully. They’re leaning on the bar of a street stall, and Ahsoka is eating her second helping of what’s turned out to be a surprisingly good stew. She doesn’t think she wants to know what’s actually in it, but it tastes very good.</p><p>Rex raises an eyebrow. He looks at her from under his hood, his dark eyes glittering in the shade and reflecting the light of the only lamp.</p><p>He doesn’t say anything, but Ahsoka can read the scepticism on his face, and she feels her montrals flush—she isn’t fourteen anymore, but it seems like he still has that trick down.</p><p>“It’s nothing illegal,” she begins and then shuts her mouth because it really is. She amends, “it <em>is </em>illegal, but it’s nothing bad.”</p><p>Rex snorts. “Well, that’s a relief,” he says, his half-smile fond.</p><p>The serving droid tuts at them, their mechanical voice full of disapproval, and Rex turns to look at them, a scowl on his face.</p><p>“Mind your own business, Teecee,” he tells him, and the droid jumps and skitters away, muttering under their breath.</p><p>Ahsoka snorts. “You should be nicer to droids,” she tells Rex, keeping her voice light.</p><p>“I <em>am </em>nice,” Rex replies. “Teecee is fine. He owes me a favour.”</p><p>Ahsoka raises her brows.</p><p>“It’s a long story, and I thought you were in a hurry,” he says, and he’s still smiling, still fond, but she still remembers how to read him, and she can see the sadness beneath.</p><p>She looks at him for a beat.</p><p>“Give me your hand,” she tells him suddenly. Rex frowns.</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>“I want to give you something,” she tells him, and after a beat, he rolls his eyes and obeys.</p><p>She drops a burner comm unit on his outstretched palm, and when he sees what it is, he just blinks down at it, confused, before opening and closing his mouth a couple of times.</p><p>“Ashla,” he begins, her new name awkward and strange in his voice, “I don’t think—”</p><p>“I want you to have this,” she says. “I need to leave. And you can’t come with me, not now, maybe never. I don’t know if you’d want to, even. But I—I want you to have this. You don’t have to keep it, but I’d like it if you did.”</p><p>For a beat, Ahsoka is sure he is going to hand the comm back.</p><p>“Does this have anything to do with those people you are working with,” he says instead, and Ahsoka blinks, caught by surprise.</p><p>It could be. If they ask her, that’s what she’ll tell them. Rex would be a great asset for the Rebellion, after all: he didn’t make commander until the very end of the war, but he <em>did </em>command one of the most effective legions in the whole GAR for years more or less on his own for three long years.</p><p>“No,” she replies. She feels herself half-smile and lowers her gaze to her food. Wonders if another bowl will be too much, and looks back at Rex. “This is because I miss you.”</p><p>“But it could be,” Rex says, because he still knows her best.</p><p>Ahsoka lets herself smile, wide and sharp.</p><p>“But it could be,” she repeats, and then she asks Teecee the serving droid for another bowl of stew.</p>
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